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What is a mosaic image?

A mosaic is a picture that is made of many smaller items. Items may be pictures in any shape.

Where do I download the software?

You can download software, additional patterns and cell image collections from

http://www.aolej.com/mosaic/download.htm

Direct links for download Mosaic Creator are

http://www.aolej.com/files/MC2.zip
http://www.serianto.com/files/MC2.zip

What are main differences between Lite and Professional version?

Lite version has limit 25MB for raw BMP file output. It is enough for image size A4 & 300 DPI or A3 & 150 DPI. Professional version has no output file limit (2GB for file system limit). For some other details see http://www.aolej.com/mosaic/versions.htm

Why are there two versions?

Mosaic Creator is most featured mosaic tool for creating mosaics. We decided to publish a low-priced lite version for all of you, who just want to have fun with mosaics and want to create web thumbnail galleries. The lite version is limited in the size of the final mosaic, but it uses the same algorithms as the professional version.

Are there any fees for upgrade to newer version?

No, registered users can upgrade to newer version freely. Just download latest version and install it over older version.

I want to use Mosaic Creator for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc. Is there any additional cost to use software for these purposes?

There are no hidden fees. You need register Lite or Professional version only.

What is the cost of your Professional version?

For actual cost of Lite, Professional version and upgrade to Professional version see
http://www.aolej.com/mosaic/register.htm.

What are system requirements?

Minimal requirements: MS Windows 95/98/NT/ME/2000/XP, Pentium 200, 32 MB RAM (128 MB recommended), 3 MB hard disk space for installation.

How many pictures I need?

It depends on your requirements. If you want to render quality photo mosaic, you may need more than 1000 pictures. Number of pictures depends on content of source image and your pictures. If you want to render mosaic from some blue source image and your set of cell images (pictures) don't include enough blue images, images must be repeated or used images with other color and colorized. Mosaic Creator has many features to enable render mosaics from small set of pictures. You can start render mosaic from 1 picture.

Can I make grayscale mosaic?

Yes you can. You only check grascale option.

Can I render mosaic from some special set of cell images like pictures of characters (create ASCII art)?

Yes, you can render mosaic from any set of cell images. Mosaic Creator has built in special rendering method and use color space recalculation to produce quality mosaics from special set of cell images. Special set doesn't cover full color space and there must be some corrections in calculation. Go to page Cell filling and check option Force cell options. There is recommended minimize repetition control, set Cell Image Repetition options to high cell duplicity, set Minimal distance between the same images to 0 or 1, and set Max cell image repetition to value near 1000.

Can I make mosaic from landscape and portrait images as cell images?

Yes, you can mix any aspect ratio and size for cell images. However they will be cropped or stretched to result cell size. Whether you want the cell images to be cropped or stretched is an option in Mosaic Creator.

Do I need resize source image to specific size?

No, Mosaic Creator recalculates source image to required size automatically.

How much time I need to create a photo mosaic?

It depends on size of result image and number of cell images. There are many options for enhance rendering process. You may produce good results in few hours. If you save configuration, you can produce mosaic with another source image in few minutes. Better is starting rendering mosaic with small set of cell images and small cells. If result is ok, use full set of cell images. If it ok, set target cell size and render production mosaic.

I want to create tiled mosaic from children B&W photos. I don't need create photo mosaic, but only tiled image. Can I use Mosaic Creator?

Yes, there are two modes for rendering tiled mosaic. You can select random order or file name order. Go to page Source Image and select one of these options.

Can I prepare web thumbnail gallery and what I need?

You need images only. For creating thumbnails is good Mosaic Creator Lite version. You can use built-in thumbnail wizards and prepare result in 10 clicks.

What I must to know if I want to create web thumbnail gallery?

You need Mosaic Creator only. Use thumbnail wizard and HTML pages will be prepared in few seconds. You don't need any knowledge about HTML. (see sample web galleries)

Can I publish Web thumbnail gallery with Mosaic Creator?

No, Mosaic Creator don't support any FTP uploads and other methods for publishing HTTP content. You should use third party software.

Can I render mosaic for selected source image area?

Yes, there must be prepared mask for partial rendering or used basic shapes as rectangle, circle, pentagon, triangle. Go to page Cell filling and click Filling grid. You can edit empty and filled cells or load mask from file.

Can I render mosaic where some part will be filled with one set of cell images and another with second set?

No, there is no option for more cell image sets. You can render mosaic two times, first with first cell set and next with second set. With enabled filling grid you can prepare two images and merge it into one in graphics editor.

I am making a 36x26 cell poster and I use 522 cell images. I'm noticing that the mosaics created don't have all of the cell images that I told it to use. Am I doing something wrong?

If you have mosaic full filled but not all set of images used, you must start small calculation.

Your mosaic is a 36x36 cell = 1296 cells, image set is 522 images

1296 / 522 = 2.483

This means that some images must repeated 3 times and some 2 times. There are few options to set cell image repetition, go to page Cell filling.

1. Max cell image repetition - number of max repetition for one cell image in mosaic if you set 3 in your case, it is sufficient
2. Minimal distance between the same images you can control distance for image repetition, you may avoid side by side the same images you can set it to some small value for example 5 (minimal distance of the same cell images will be 5 cells)
3. Cell image repetition options - play with proprietary options to control image distribution
4. Randomize cell image filling - to avoid image patterning you may add some noise to calculation process, but you have enough images and you don't need it

I would like to use Mosaic Creator to create a large image (3 feet by 4 feet) so that I can print it out on a plotter. Does the software have this capability?

Yes, you must purchase Mosaic Creator Professional.

Does this software allow an output of at the least a 20x30 inch print size @300 DPI resolution?

Yes, size is not a problem in Mosaic Creator Professional version.

Can I use "portrait" oriented images for the cells and a "landscape" image source without distorting the image proportion of the cells?

Yes, you can use any proportion for source image and cell images. You can set size of cell images in pixels.

I am interested in the professional version of Mosaic Creator. We are in the school picture business and would like to create poster size mosaics from student photos. Does the software have this capability?

Yes, you can create mosaic from student photos as random mosaic or photo mosaic. You can use any source image.

Where is stored result mosaic image?

See page Mosaic File & Size, there is edit box - Target image mosaic file name by default
C:\Program files\MosaicCreator\Out\Mosaic.bmp.
You can find result mosaic image there or press Select button and change directory, file name or result file type.

Does this software come in a Macintosh version (OS9 or OSX)?

No, Mosaic Creator is available for PC on WIN 95/98/NT/ME/2000/XP. Some graphics software may be better on PCs.

What mosaic software is the best?

You can see comparison of selected mosaic software on http://www.aolej.com/mosaic/compare.htm and out-of date mosaic results on http://mazaika.tripod.com/maztutor/mosaictest.html

There are many mosaic tools and plugins for Photoshop/Paint Shop pro, but only few are permanently enhanced. This is FAQ for Mosaic Creator any we want to be objective.

Mosaic Creator has unique rendering enhancements, support for nonrectangular cells and ability render movie sequence. You can decide if some other software has these features.

Links for mosaic software are there:
http://directory.google.com/.../Mosaic_Creation/
http://graphicssoft.about.com/...=photo mosaic

Is it possible to use large cells? Like 700x700 pixel cells? I'd like to do a video animation, but want it to start with one cell fullscreen.

Yes, you can use large cells. Only need enter your size cell width and cell height in page Mosaic File & Size. Limit for one cell size is 999 x 999 pixels.

We want to make a big (poster sized) 3ft x 4 ft mosaic, the problem we are encountering is that the biggest we seem to be able to get it is 11 inches x 8 inches.

You can set size of mosaic as you need. Set size of cell (width and height) and enter number of cells in row and column.

We have 1000 images only and they can each be used only once, it is a special project, which requires that we not repeat any tile. Each image that we have is a 600 x 600pixel image square. But it seems that the largest cell size image allowed on the professional version is 120 x 120 pixels. How can we make this 1000-celled mosaic (roughly 37 x 28 columns/rows) come out as an image that is near 4ft x 3ft and at least 300dpi?

You may set any size of cells, in your case 600x600 pixels. If you have 1000 unique images, you should calculate mosaic size. If you use 37x28 cells = 1036 cells. If you don't want repeat any tile, 36 cells stay empty. If you want to fill this 36 cells with duplicates, go to page Cell filling and set Max cell image repetition to 2. If you don't accept duplicates enter value 1.

We're trying to create a photo mosaic where the individual cells are each at least 640 x 480 @ 72 dpi. Is this possible with your software? The web site isn't clear on this. We purchased ArcSoft PhotoMontage after they told us their software would do this...and after receiving it....it won't...(which sucks). Don't want to make the same mistake again. Thanks...

You can set any size of cell up to 999x999 pixels. You can set result image DPI from available values (72, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 600, 1200). If there will be some special requirements, we may deliver version with other values.

How can the individual pieces of a poster size mosaic be saved to print?

There is not option to save individual images. There is log file, where are stored file names in matrix. File name of log file is Img_matrix.txt. You must enable creating matrix log. Go to page Cell images and check Generate text file with cell image matrix.

Which picture file formats does Mosaic Creator support?

Currently supported are: BMP, JPG, TIF, PNG and AVI as output formats and BMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF, TGA, PCX, GIF, WMF, EMF as input formats. Source image and cell images are input images and result mosaic image can be set from BMP, JPG, TIF, PNG and AVI.

How can I change result mosaic file type to TIFF?

You may set result output format to BMP, PNG, TIFF or JPG. Go to page Mosaic file & size, click to Select button and change file type.

I have generated a mosaic of a big photo with a lot of little images. I have a great generation in all the color except the black areas that are totally black squares. I read over and over the explanation of the help file, but cannot figure out what make that...

There may be problems with images (one or more), may be corrupted files. You can use batch process to resize/change file type to jpg (IrfanView or other freeware tool). There may be problem with unsupported image encoding (JPEG CMYK).

If I register, will the Created by Mosaic Creator captions on the result images disappear?

Yes.

Mosaic Creator renders a small percentage and then stops... outputting nothing. What is problem?

There may be problems with images (one or more), may be corrupted files. You can use batch process to resize/change file type to jpg (some freeware tool). There may be problem with unsupported image encoding (JPEG CMYK).

I have been testing out your Mosaic Creator and it seems to be what we need. I am making a yearbook for my child's elementary school. On one page spread (two facing pages) we want to have a montage of photos of all the children. The school pictures that were taken at the beginning of the year are all on one CD in B&W tiff files. When I run the program it works great, we can see each child and yet also see the school mascot that is the source file. The children will have so much fun trying to find themselves and their friends and teachers. How do we make a JPEG file out of the output so we can put it in the yearbook? Which version should we pay for?

You may set result output format to BMP, PNG, TIFF or JPG. Go to page Mosaic file & size, click to Select button and change file type. If you need JPG, you can select it. Additional options for JPEG file type are in Program configuration. You can set JPEG save quality and check if use progressive encoding. You can use lite version if you need result image up to 25MB (image size 3000x2700 pixels). If you want to produce poster size, there is available professional version.

Does the algorithm work only by color and lightness or does it also try to map image components (edges)?

There is used compromise for selecting cell images. If you select cell images more by color, edges are smoother, if you compare cell images to edges and objects on source image, there are not used correct colors. If you need enforce more color accuracy, you may switch to page Cell filling and check Source color fix options.

Can I use web images for the images in the Cell image list? I store over 100,000 images on my website and would really like to have a mosaic created with a chosen few for various purposes.

You must have all images accessible from local hard drive or mapped drive. Number of files is not limited (on WIN 95/98 are some limits in system).

How can I run the program so that I can be confident it uses each picture once and ONLY once, but definitely uses each picture in the mosaic?

Go to page Cell filling and set Max cell image repetition to 1. Each picture will be included only once. If you want to use all selected cell images, you should set appropriate mosaic size. If you have 600 images, mosaic size may be 30x20 = 600 cells. If you use another size, for example 28x22 = 616, 16 cell stay empty, because you set Max cell image repetition. If you set Max cell image repetition to 2, 16 cells will be filled with duplicates.

I was wondering if there is an upgrade available from the Lite Version to the Pro version. For example, say I purchase the Lite Version, and then decide I'd like the Pro version. Can I upgrade for the difference in price between the two versions?

Yes, you can upgrade from Lite to Professional version anytime.

I would like to know if it is possible to select certain cell pictures to not be repeated or at least some mechanism for keeping cell pictures from repeating right next to each other. I really need a solution to this.

You can control many parameters for cell image distribution. Go to page Cell filling. You can control minimal distance between the same images and maximal cell image repetition. You can avoid texture effect by adding some noise to mosaic rendering.

Does professional version allow me to output to an EPS or an AI file type?

No, supported file types are BMP, PNG, TIFF and JPG. If you render image sequence you can use AVI file as output. You can edit or convert mosaic image after rendering as standard picture.

I' want to buy Mosaic Creator but I haven't credit card. How I can to do?

Go to page http://www.aolej.com/mosaic/register.htm and click on registrant buttons. You can select one from available ordering options, on RegSoft - Credit Card, FAX Ordering, Postal Mail, Phone. Some other options are on ShareIt.

I would like to know the best available software for creating professional photo mosaic on the Macintosh platform.

Sorry, we develop only for PCs. You must search Internet. Some applications are available on
http://directory.google.com/.../Mosaic_Creation/